The Soviet State’s Attack on Religious Denominations: Oppression and Persecution of Clergy in the Kharkiv Region (Late 1920s to Early 1930s)

Abstract

The article examines the campaign of the Soviet totalitarian state against religious confessions in the Kharkiv region in the late 1920s and early 1930s. An overview of the historiography of the problem shows that its coverage in the literature has been insufficient and even fragmentary. The author considers the causes of the Bolsheviks’ vigorous anti-religious offensive amid Stalin’s renewed military-communist assault on the country with the aim to rapidly create a non-religious socialist society. The principal directions and methods of the atheist campaign in the region are identified. “Ministers of religious cults” of all denominations without exception were stripped of voting rights, which in fact turned them into outcasts of Soviet society. Eviction of clergymen and their families from nationalized and municipal housing in the region’s cities and towns was widely practiced, often pushing this category of citizens to the brink of survival. It is shown that the harassment and administrative abuse of clergy by local authorities, often deliberately demeaning clergymen’s human dignity, became a daily occurrence during this period. The article considers the practices of illegally “re-imposing” local taxes and levies on “ministers of religious cults,” setting exorbitant rent rates for them, charging them various fees, forcing them to buy government bonds, arbitrarily extracting from them illegal in-kind payments, and the like. Furthermore, at the turn of the 1930s the State Political Directorate (DPU) significantly stepped up the persecution of groups of clergy and believers belonging to various religious denominations (Russian Orthodox Church, Ukrainian Autokephalian Orthodox Church, Protestant communities, and others). The article shows a sharp reduction in the numbers of clergy in the Kharkiv region in the early 1930s due to the massive anti-religious campaign of the Soviet government, as well as a notable intensification of the state’s control over the activities of this social group.